When film and TV director Marilou Diaz-Abaya succumbed to breast cancer at 57 on Oct. 8, I remembered the strange conversation we had a couple of years back. She had just learned that her cancer had returned after a wonderful absence of more than a year. From out of the blue, she asked if I … Read more

The “Framework agreement” jointly drawn by the negotiating panels of the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is a significant advance in the protracted quest for peace in Muslim Mindanao. But, even as we bank on the inherent infectiousness of peace agreements, we should be wary about expecting too much too soon. The agreement, … Read more

The approval and trust ratings of the top public officials, as reported in Pulse Asia’s latest survey, probably tell us more about the nature of Philippine politics than they might suggest at first glance. President Aquino’s ratings are at 78 percent, up by 11 percent from the previous quarter, which is unusually high for a … Read more

What’s wrong with having a father and son (Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile and candidate Jack Ponce Enrile), or a brother and sister (Senators Alan Peter and Pia Cayetano), or two brothers (Sen. Jinggoy Estrada and candidate JV Ejercito) sitting together as senators in a 24-member chamber? What’s wrong with having the wife succeed her husband … Read more

On the front page of the Inquirer yesterday, there is a fascinating photograph of the main personalities who came to the launch of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s memoirs. This picture is worth a thousand words. It shows four seated figures: Imelda Marcos, Cristina Ponce Enrile, Juan Ponce Enrile (JPE), and Benigno S. Aquino III … Read more

Universities in the modern world have been able to host some of the most pathbreaking advances in knowledge by providing an environment in which independent thinkers may pursue intellectual work without fear.  But developing this capacity is not the easiest thing in the world. Universities need enormous amounts of resources that cannot be met by … Read more

Martial law aimed to wipe out the communist insurgency, but ironically it turned into the single most important recruitment tool of the communist movement. How did this happen? The first arrests that were carried out just after midnight of Sept. 23, 1972, targeted high-profile figures from the legal opposition, the press, the academe, and the … Read more

A few days ago, I participated in a forum to explore the purpose and methodology of establishing a “museum of memory” that would contain and preserve memories from the dark period of martial law. The concept behind this is prompted by the strong feeling that today’s young people hardly have an idea of what happened … Read more

AS we get older, we realize we begin to look more and more like our parents. This recognition comes to us in a flash, and usually we pay it no heed. In ironic resignation, we accept the annoying mannerisms, the volatile temper, and even the illnesses as part of the genetic package that our ancestors … Read more

Before it became wholly associated with the suicide terrorist attacks against the United States, Sept. 11 used to be remembered as the day Salvador Allende, Chile’s first elected Marxist president, was killed in the course of the military coup that installed the brutal dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.  That tragic event started the reversal of … Read more